Sins (37 page)

Her refusal had angered Max. He had lost his temper with her and lashed out at her, punching her hard in the
stomach, the force of the blow making her sick and leaving her crawling on the floor of her bedroom in so much pain that she had neither known nor cared that he had left. Until later. Until her body had started craving him again.

She would tire of him, of course–that went without saying–and in fact she was surprised that she hadn’t done so already.

She fidgeted with the hem of her mini now. It was three days since she had last seen him. She looked across the sports field to where her mother was standing with Robert. She’d better go over.

Drogo watched her walk away from him in a skirt so short she had every pair of eyes in the vicinity fixed on her. She’d got good legs and it was not surprising that
Vogue
had eulogised her, stating that with her beauty she more than matched the looks of many of the day’s top models.

Bailey had done the photo shoot, Drogo had noticed, wondering cynically if the photographer had adopted what was supposed to be his favoured fashion shoot practice of closing the studio door and fucking the model.

Even he was torn between appreciation for what had to be one of the sexiest bodies he had ever seen, Drogo admitted, and his awareness of what a total bitch Emerald could be.

As he had told her, he was grateful to her for refusing his proposal–very grateful, in fact. They saw one another regularly, both socially in London, since they moved in the same circles, and more privately at Denham, for Amber had not only welcomed him as Robert’s rightful
successor, she had always welcomed him into her family, and Drogo appreciated that.

Emerald cared only for one person and that person was herself.

Robert was lucky he had his grandparents to give him the loving secure home they did.

Since he had a duty to the dukedom to provide it with an heir, if he could find a woman who would be as good a mother to his children and as loving a wife to him as Amber was to her children and husband, then he should, if he had any sense, marry her without hesitation, Drogo acknowledged.

The trouble was, though, that thanks to his own stupidity in not recognising the danger signs he had allowed himself to be manoeuvred into a situation where it was becoming increasingly obvious that he was expected to propose to Gwendolyn or look like a total heel. Even now he wasn’t entirely sure how what he had intended merely as a kindness to Gwen, because he felt sorry for her, had come to be regarded by virtually everyone he knew, including Gwen herself, as the forerunner to a proposal of marriage.

Robert’s private London boys’ school prepared most of its pupils for Eton, and it amused Emerald to see the looks of outrage on the faces of the other ‘mummies’ as she stalked past them in her newly fashionable miniskirt, all long legs and long straight hair.

Since she had met Max, Emerald had begun to feel as though she was two very different people: the outer Emerald and the inner Emerald. To the outer Emerald it was all-important that other people admired and envied her; that she had the best of everything, leaving other women awed and envious, and knowing that they could never match her–in anything.

The inner Emerald was different. She was wild and reckless, a hedonist and a sensualist who would go to any lengths to satisfy those desires.

The outer Emerald could only be seen in public with the right kind of man at the right kind of places, and had an image and a position to maintain.

The only position the inner Emerald wanted to maintain was one that had Max deep inside her, fucking her until she cried out as she came.

The inner Emerald was her secret and one she intended to keep. She was a temporary aberration who would disappear as quickly as she had appeared. She had to. Emerald might enjoy the
frisson
of excitement she got from living dangerously on the edge, but afterwards there was always that voice inside her head to be answered. A voice that accused her shrilly of being like her real father, the plebeian painter who had seduced her mother, a common nobody of a man, driven by his sexual desires. That voice was a voice Emerald wanted to blot out. She wasn’t like that. She was what she had grown up believing herself to be, what she had been brought up to be, and that was the daughter of a duke, an aristocrat beyond the rules that bound lesser people, rather than a nobody who was quite simply beneath those rules.

Emerald despised people who gave in to fear, people who were weak and vulnerable. She would never ever allow those unbearable truths revealed to her by Alessandro’s mother to instil fear in her. She would fight with every ounce of her strength and determination to continue to be accepted as Lady Emerald Devenish. No one would ever be allowed to take that from her. Nothing was more important to her than that. Not even her desire for Max.

Emerald smiled to herself. She had perfected a small depreciating shrug and a ruefully dismissive laugh as she explained to those who might not know that she was in fact not merely the daughter of a duke, but also by marriage a princess–‘although I never use the title. European titles always seem so amusingly vulgar and overdone.’

Sometimes she was tempted to use it, if only to infuriate Alessandro’s mother and remind both her and the girl Alessandro had later married that whilst
their
marriage remained childless, she had Alessandro’s son. Which reminded her, she must get Bailey to give her some copies of the photographs he had taken of her and Robert for the
Vogue
shoot so that she could send them to Alessandro’s mother, with a thoughtful little note saying that she wouldn’t want her to miss the chance to see how well Robert was growing up.

Thank goodness the school holidays were about to start and she could hand Robert over to her mother for most of the summer. Did it ever occur to her mother that, despite all the love she had lavished on others, Emerald was the only one who had provided her with a grandchild? She looked at her watch. She wanted to get home just in case Max had rung. She was supposed to be attending a dinner party tonight, but if he hadn’t rung then she might cancel and go instead to the Ad Lib Club, which was so popular with everyone who was anyone, she decided, as she made her way towards where her mother was standing, only to discover that Drogo had got there before her and that Robert had attached himself to him. It really was ridiculous the way her son positively doted on the dreadful drover, and all her mother’s fault for encouraging the situation.

‘Robert should have won that race. I wish you wouldn’t encourage him to be such a softie, Mummy,’ Emerald complained to Amber. ‘Mind you, Eton should put an end to that.’

‘Eton? Emerald, he’s only seven, still a little boy. He won’t be going to Eton for years yet.’

‘More’s the pity.’ Emerald glanced at her watch again. ‘Mummy, I’m going to have to fly. I’m going out this evening.’

‘With Max Preston?’

‘Who told you about Max? Oh, the
drover
, I suppose.’

‘Actually Beth mentioned him. She thought I ought to know. Gwendolyn had told her. I don’t want to interfere, Emerald, but he does have a rather unsavoury reputation.’

The discomfort in her mother’s voice made Emerald’s face harden.

‘Not worrying that I might follow your example, are you, Mummy? Surely I’ve already proved that I won’t. After all, the man who fathered
my
son was a prince and
I
was married to him. Whatever I might choose to do with Max has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that at the moment I happen to find him amusing. It’s the fashion you see, Mummy.’

‘He’s a gangster, Emerald, with a reputation for cruelty and violence, especially sexual violence towards women.’

The shock of her mother being so unexpectedly well informed and outspoken held Emerald silent for a few seconds before she came back coolly.

‘Really, Mummy, you should be careful about reading the gutter press. Only a certain class of person does, you know. It’s perfectly acceptable these days to have grown up in the East End. Max knows that I have standards that I expect to be met and that he has to treat me properly. I make sure of that.’

‘I’m only warning you to be careful, Emerald. After all—’

‘After all
what
? Yo u don’t want me to forget that you let some gutter trash of an artist father me? Don’t worry, Mummy, I won’t
ever
forget it.’ Anger burned in Emerald’s gaze. ‘Max is just a small amusement, an adventure…’

Impatiently Emerald called Robert over to say goodbye to him, stepping back from him as he made to run into her arms.

‘No, Robert, don’t touch me, your hands are filthy. And besides, you are far too old now for that kind of thing.’

Ignoring the grim look Drogo was giving her, she turned on her heel. Really, her mother was so stupid. Did she honestly think that Emerald would allow anyone, man or woman, to control her or damage her in any way? She loved her freedom and her social status far too much for that. Hadn’t she always promised herself that nothing could ever be more important to her than being who the world–her world–believed her to be?

She would never let anyone prejudice her status, especially not a mere man. She would never allow her reputation to be ruined for the sake of a sexual fling, as her mother had risked doing. But then she was far, far cleverer than her mother.

‘Move up,’ Janey demanded cheerfully as she sat down next to Rose on the sofa in the sitting room of the Cheyne Walk house, where Amber was having a family get-together prior to returning to Cheshire.

‘No Emerald, I see,’ Janey commented, reaching for a
chocolate digestive, ‘although Mama is taking Robert back to Chesire with her in the morning. But she did look wonderful in those photographs in
Vogue
.’

Rose agreed.

‘Cindy says that she should have worn one of my designs, though,’ Janey complained.

After four years of working for other designers, Janey had finally fulfilled her dream of opening her own shop, Janey F, the previous autumn, using Denby silk in new modern designs to create her pretty little mini-dresses and other clothes, which had immediately proved popular.

Cindy Freeman, a girl Janey had met through her theatrical connections, had recently become Janey’s official business partner, taking over the financial running of the shop, leaving Janey free to design its stock.

Janey, with her eager-to-please nature, had been allowing her hard-up friends to borrow clothes from the shop because, as she had näively told Rose in the weeks after she had first opened, ‘They go everywhere and, like they say, people are bound to ask where they got their stuff from, and then come in to the shop to buy.

‘Cathy McGowan off
Ready, Steady, Go!
has already asked one of the girls where she got the skirt she was wearing when she spotted her dancing on the show,’ Janey had told Rose excitedly.

Sadly, though, it had turned out that Janey’s friends had not always remembered to return their borrowed clothes, and Rose had been relieved when Janey had announced that she was taking on a business partner
who would take a harder-headed attitude towards the running of the shop, leaving Janey free to design.

‘Honestly, Rose, Cindy is just wonderful the way she gets things done and won’t take no for an answer.

‘Oh, and did I tell you that when Charlie and I were having dinner at the tratt the other evening Ossie Clark was there and he came over to congratulate me and tell me that he liked my work?’

Janey’s face was pink with pleasure. Rose wasn’t surprised. Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell were one of the London scene’s most prominent designer couples.

‘Cindy has really turned things round for me. She’s just the best partner I could have had. I am soooo grateful to Charlie for introducing us,’ Janey enthused.

Charlie was Janey’s latest lame duck. An out-of-work model-cum-would-be rock singer, who never seemed to get a job, he was stunningly good-looking and four years younger than Janey.

‘Poor Charlie,’ Janey continued. ‘He’s feeling really low at the moment because he hasn’t got an advertising casting he went for. It’s like he says, it’s so often those who know the right person who get the best work, not the ones with the most talent. He was so sure he was going to get the ad that he’d been out and bought himself some new clothes, and now he’s broke.’

And expecting you to fund him, Rose thought, but she knew better than to say anything.

‘He really needs a holiday to cheer him up, but we’re so busy at the shop that I just can’t take any time off at the moment.’

Rose knew all about being too busy to take any time off.
Her own business had really blossomed with the advent of the swinging sixties, coupled with a chance meeting with one of the movers and shakers responsible for some of the new groups emerging on the music scene. Drew Longton adopted the manner and style of an ex-public school boy but his origins and education were middle class. He excelled at spotting–and using–talent, he specialised in funding start-up businesses–hairdressers, boutiques, clubs, that kind of thing–and Rose had received from him several commissions to decorate initially his offices, and then the shops and salons of several of his clients, and their flats. She also received frequent sexual invitations from him.

Drew was good-looking and a smooth talker, but Rose wasn’t interested. She’d met too many men who wanted to take her to bed for her curiosity value. Besides, Drew already had an official fiancée, a pretty blonde-haired model who looked like Patti Boyd.

‘Cindy thinks I should send some of my stuff over to Ellie in New York and ask her if she can get
Vogue
there to feature it, but you know what Ellie’s like. She’d think I was being brash and pushy.’

‘She is working in the Features Department, not the Fashion Department,’ Rose felt bound to defend Ella. ‘And I think it’s to her credit that she doesn’t go in for nepotism. You never know, though, Janey, with London being so cool it could be that American
Vogue
might be tempted to do a feature on a fab new London designer.’